There was a button shop. This I do remember. A shop
with tiny drawers of buttons reaching to the ceiling,
accessible only by precarious ladder and the storekeeper’s verve.
And a baseball card store, nestled in an upstairs corner.
What were the other places? I can remember none. Only
the feel of my father's hand, strong, holding mine
as we walked past doors first thrown open when
the paint on Andrew Carnegie’s libraries was still fresh.
It was a dreamer’s surfeit of items wedged into one,
a steampunk Amazon. For the boy who became me,
it was downtown Pittsburgh, even more than
the Kaufmann’s clock or Honus Wagner Sporting Goods.
One day, decades ago, they tore it down. I read about it in passing
in The Pittsburgh Press (itself now gone),
and realized I knew of no other building in the land
with a store that sold only buttons.
— Oct. 31, 1998
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Love this!
Thank you, Denise!